These tiny batteries charge phones in seconds and last for a week

Battery anxiety is an all-to-familiar, modern-day problem for many of us, and with phones becoming thinner there needs to be a trade-off between battery life and design. The solution? Supercapacitors.

In an attempt to tackle the issue in smartphones, a team of scientists at the University of Central Florida (UCF) has created a tiny supercapacitor battery that can last for days with only a few seconds’ charge. The research was published in the academic journal ACS Nano.

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The supercapacitors inside the battery store large amounts of energy and can be recharged more than 30,000 times, compared to typical lithium-ion batteries which start to drain after 300 to 500 full charges, on average.

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“If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,” said Nitin Choudhary, a postdoctoral associate who helped develop the new technology.

The team has been studying the use of nanomaterials to improve the supercapacitors that could enhance or even replace batteries in electronic devices.

Supercapacitors haven’t typically been used in mobile device batteries before because they would make smartphones much larger, for example. However, the team at the UCF made the new supercapacitors with tiny wires that are a nanometer thick. A highly conductive core helps with fast electron transfer for fast charging and discharging, and the supercapacitors are coated with a high-energy shell to generate high energy and power densities.

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The supercapacitors could be used in phones and other electronic gadgets, such as wearables, due to their small size and flexible nature. They could even be used in electric vehicles that could benefit from sudden bursts of power and speed.

“It’s not ready for commercialisation. But this is a proof-of-concept demonstration and our studies show there are very high impacts for many technologies,” said principal investigator Yeonwoong “Eric” Jung, an assistant professor with joint appointments at the NanoScience Technology Centre and the Materials Science and Engineering Department.

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Jung is currently working with UCF’s Office of Technology transfer to patent the new process.

Solving the problems of smartphone batteries is keeping scientists busy. Last year, a team from Stanford created an aluminium battery which could charge phones in 60 seconds. Another team, also from Stanford, created the ‘holy grail’ of battery tech by creating a pure lithium anode, which, when added to a battery, can boost its life by up to three times.

If you want a smartphone with a superfast charge and can’t wait for the UCF team’s creation, Chinese brand OnePlus releases all their smartphones with a Dash Charger – which can give a battery 60 per cent charge in half an hour. It might not be as good as the Nokia batteries we were used to, but it’s a start.